


Emulate

by starscrearn



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starscrearn/pseuds/starscrearn
Summary: Not many bots knew it, but Rung was a cuddly mech. The nature of his job forced him to also be a solitary one.





	Emulate

Since joining the Lost Light, Rung had been having difficulty recharging consistently, burdened as he was by the demands of being the only therapist in a crew of more than two hundred potential patients. When he did find time to himself, he often found himself harried by unpleasant thoughts and a multitude of regrets and doubts, new and old. For a while he was able to lose himself in his work, but that attempt was ultimately bound to fail. His exhaustion fed his desperation to rest, which in turn only fed his exhaustion. The cycle quickly became a vicious one, and it wore him down. Despite the impact it was clearly beginning to have on his work, he was loath to impose upon the ship’s medics for help on such a small matter. They had enough concerns of their own with keeping the crew running.

For a time, Rung forced himself away from the rest of the crew to rest whenever the opportunity arose, whether it was at his desk or tucked away in the nest of blankets and pillows that had swiftly overtaken his berth. It had seemed like a fairly straightforward plan at first, though it quickly devolved into an overworked pattern of excuses for his absences. Eventually he abandoned his efforts and resigned himself to exhaustion.

Remarkably, once he rejoined the crew’s activities, he began to feel better despite having less rest. It was almost a relief to be forgotten in the swell-- it meant mechs didn’t (or couldn’t) pinpoint him as the ship’s psychiatrist and treated him as simply another one of them, albeit an odd one. Like many of his efforts, it worked, but not for long enough. Over time, the frenetic energy of such gatherings began to make his head spin, and he was quickly reminded that not being known as “the psychiatrist” was not preferable to not being known at all. All the interaction, which had been welcome at first, became yet another strain on his already flagging energy, and he began to excuse himself earlier and earlier. Eventually he stopped attending ship events altogether, instead opting for the calm of his habsuite when he could get back to it.

It was there that he finally acknowledged the root of his problems.

Not many bots were aware of it, but Rung was a cuddly mech. The nature of his job forced him to also be a solitary one. But it hadn’t been the quantity of interaction that had been lacking, it was the quality. The last time he’d truly had proper contact with other mechs had been after the attack on the Kimia Facility, when the cramped quarters of the escape pod had forced him and the other survivors together. The realization about his troubles left him rattled, despite knowing all too well what effects a lack of physical contact could have on a bot, and not entirely from his research. 

Rung pushed the thought out of mind and turned over to tug another blanket up over himself, adding to the little cocoon he’d ensconced himself in on the berth.

=========

Weeks later it was becoming increasingly apparent that this wasn’t a viable alternative to true contact. The prospect of that hung tantalizingly just out of reach; on a ship so prone to accidents and occurrences that bordered on the ridiculous, and as its only psychiatrist,  _ anyone _ could become a patient, no matter how vehemently they opposed the idea in the present moment. He was unwilling to place himself and a potential patient into such a situation, no matter the impact not doing so had on him. 

His failing resolve had almost completely crumbled by the time he hit upon a solution, unintentionally brought up by one of his patients: emulators. Rung was amazed he hadn’t recognized their potential sooner; he’d had such a program in the past, though at some point during the war, he’d lost it. An emulator was a simple solution, and one with no external burden. It took him a few weeks of tinkering with the program, sacrificing bits of rest here and there to complete it as soon as possible, but he eventually had a workable plug-in installed on a drive. It wasn’t a professional job, to be sure, but it functioned. 

Rung tested it that night, in the privacy of his habsuite. He hooked it into a port in one of his various hidden compartments with shaky hands and settled back, waiting for the program to mesh with his coding. Moments later he received an alert and the settings scrolled over his HUD. He played with them for longer that he’d have cared to admit, adjusting measurements and weighting. Eventually he forced himself to ignore his nervousness and selected a subprogram at random. After another few adjustments, the program booted up. 

It took effect immediately. The pressure sensors in his shoulders registered contact as the coding slipped an intangible arm around him. A hand brushed over his wrist and tugged at it, encouraging him to lay back and let the bulk of the coding activate. He slipped under the blankets tossed haphazardly over his berth and felt a presence curl up against his back. An arm slipped over his waist and settled in, resting a hand against his sparkglass. He felt his spark buzz against it in response and the fingers stroked briefly over the glass. 

Rung swiftly fell into recharge, lulled by the strong arm wrapped around his chest and the knees tucked up behind his own. His frame molded easily to the invisible one behind it, and the last sound that escaped him before sleep took him was a soft, happy sigh.

He was nearly late for his first appointment the next morning and it was a combination of alerts from his calendar programming and gentle hands from the emulator that got him moving. The hands confused him for a moment before he remembered the program. He started to deactivate it on his way out, but paused before he reached the door. No one else would know the emulator was there, and the overlay in his HUD wasn’t too distracting when it was collapsed…

He entered his office with a hand stroking over his backplates and an equally gentle smile on his face.

=========

Rung went to work like that more than once afterwards, after particularly bad nights. The arms wrapped around his shoulders brought him comfort, but often led him to fall asleep at his desk between appointments. Gentle hands would shake him awake in time to prep for his next patient. Then they would return to his shoulders, kneading out the tension in his lines and keeping him relaxed enough to focus. The subprogram he eventually labelled K was usually activated for this; fortunately no sensors but his own could pick up the faint trace of a cygar in the air.

He quickly adapted this and the other subprograms he ran to specific situations. The one he came to think of as M was often activated on nights when a touch of added safety was welcome; it simulated the largest presence and was enough to wrap almost completely around him. Rung had fought off the aftereffects of more than one nightmare in that subprogram’s arms, calmed by the massive frame at his back and the gentlest hands stroking over his panic-heated frame. This subprogram was rarely active outside of his habsuite; it was the largest drain on his systems, and too awkward to realistically fit anywhere but a berth.

The one he’d named R was the calmest of the subprograms. It swiftly became the everyday program as well, sized as it was to be the average of the frames on the ship. Nothing in the emulator was coded to provide sound, but that program in particular had a companionable silence to it, though Rung was aware it was likely because the associations he’d built. He put the most work into the R subprogram. Refining it became almost a hobby, tweaking it here and there until it grew into the most realistic version he could make of it. 

The S subprogram had been a later addition, actually designed to combat the effects of the others. This was the subroutine responsible for waking him and tugging at his hands until he was up and moving; without it he had a suspicion he’d be content to lay in those unseen arms all day. Though Rung had built it specifically to disturb him, it was still comforting and friendly, and it worked well with the other subprograms. It was bright and cheerful, though not so energetic that he dreaded its activation in the mornings.

His daily life improved immensely with the emulator installed. For the first time in a long while, Rung was actually able to rest instead of dropping into unsatisfactory unconsciousness for a few hours every night. His load of patients began to feel less daunting and he began to frequent the ship’s events again.

Rung barely noticed when the emulator began to falter; he was too caught up in the comfort of contact, even if it was simulated. The programs began to cut in and out, his internal backup alarms waking him in the mornings instead of the S subprogram. His sensors would abruptly stop reading pressure against them, though it always returned after a moment or two. He started performing more regular maintenance on the emulator and for a while, it kept the glitching at bay.

And then one night, it didn’t.

He had the K subprogram running when the whole thing cut out. The faint hint of a cygar went first, followed by the pressure at his side. The last to fade out was the arm around his shoulders. Rung waited, sure it would return. When five minutes passed with no response, he ejected the drive and ran a scan. With a jolt of something close to guilt, he realized the emulator’s coding had become scrambled, likely due to his near-constant use of the thing. He sighed, tossed the drive onto the stand by the berth, and resolved to fix it in the morning.

Rung didn’t realize how dependent he’d become on the contact it provided until he was still lying awake well past the midpoint of the night cycle. The emulator hadn’t created any warmth, but his habsuite still felt colder without it. The darkness of the room was starting to become oppressive, pushing in on his frame and forcing him to curl inwards on himself to escape it. It didn’t work.

After another little while of discomfort, Rung pushed himself up and off of the berth. He wearily shuffled out of his quarters, heading for his office. He wouldn’t sleep that night; best to get an early start on the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> someday i will write something where the only emotions involved are happy ones. today is clearly not that day.


End file.
